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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Rug-making in Teotitlan

Friday we went on a tour of 6 micro-financed businesses sponsored by the Cultural Institute of Oaxaca. All loan recipients are women living in the mountain village of Teotitlan an hour from Oaxaca. Teresa and her sister run a small restaurant and sell rugs after cleaning and carding the raw wool, then spinning and dying the thread before weaving the rugs on a loom in their 4-family home. Their mother Donna makes and sells chocolate. This particular business was featured in the Travel section of the Seattle Times in October 2013. "En Via" is the micro-finance arm of the Cultural Institute which also engages in community development and education, teaching Spanish to non-Mexicans and business classes to micro-finance loan recipients.